Thursday, March 29, 2012

After the bad news from work yesterday, I had dinner with JBreiner at Village Inn. Then Chick-Fil-A with Tony and Johnny. Pizza tonight!

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Went to eye doctor. Finished Godfather collection! The Godfather II for PS3 is really fun! Texted Kim Anh a bit.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Loretta finallly learned why TV room bathroom's always so dirty. Apparently, 5 residents'd be having a party in there. XD
Edna was plotting to break into a safe! Said Joy's the leader & I should have a gun! LOL Alzheimers patients are funny!
Had steak at Kevin & Hannah's house. Met their niece Kim Anh. Parents talked a lot. And realized it's a very small world...

Saturday, March 24, 2012

KMV's poor dog Sam got into an accident & died. Just after graduating from Petsmart too! RIP Sam! :(
B&N girl was sweet but didnt help me find "Bioshock: Rapture". Talked about Godfather. Gave KMV Bday presents. Family want me to do karate.
OngBa's moving to OK. Helped clean basement. Then Chipotle & Dillards with buds. Then Taco shop for Tony's cousin. Then back to OngBa's.
Home from seeing The Hunger Games. Glad we saw it early 'cause the theater was PACKED when we left. Off to run some errands...

Friday, March 23, 2012

Whitney stories: Made eggs for mom with PLASTIC pots, poured motor oil on herself, beheaded lifesize Barbie, & got foot stuck in toilet.
Charlotte must've 9 lives. Bridget has 2nd phone & playing with her man. Blind date on Sunday. Been cooking a lot of steak.
Dream: Drift on mystery island with daughter. Suddenly at Marian Days, found movie theater, return to car, see family!

Thursday, March 22, 2012

LOL Tidus was running around. The floor was so slick that he fell on his side. Like a car trying to make a sharp turn on ice.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

How rude! Asked one of the employees at Walmart for help and she just turned away and ignored me! Off for 2 days!
Laura: " Wait until I tell Hub that there's a black man (Kip) in my room!" LOL

Monday, March 19, 2012

Found the video! It's call "Dream Rangers" by TC Banks. Very moving. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vksdBSVAM6g

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Saw a cool video on parent's Viet TV. It had a biker group going to a beach as old people & flashes back/forth to when they're young.
Fun night working with Whitney & Boss Jessica (who had to stay 'cause Carolotta's a No Call/Show). Whitney had her big black dog Fresco too!
Oklahoma will be the new Hoang Central HQ! Grandparents are moving there sometime around Easter.
Whitney's cool! She drove a homeless person to Salina for a job & helped pay a hotel for a poor family with a pregnant mom.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Showed Bridget & Loretta a pic ofGodson Joseph. They said he should be a model. "I'd buy anything with him in it whether it works or not!"
Weird night of work! Loretta's son only dates Asians 'cause he said whites try to kill him, blacks belittle him, & Mexicans are nasty. O_O

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Saw Project X with Eunice. Buffet was closed so we went straight to theater. Tatyana was crying so we skipped dinner so she can go home.
Oh yeah, today was Jessica's birthday! They had quite a yummy cake! Banana split cake with chocolate and cherries.
Walked to work for the in-service meeting. Takes 20 minutes. Just finished Duke Nukem Forever! Got a date tonight with Eunice!

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

My parents are trying to get me to go on a blind date. I have nothing on her... They gave her the link to my Lion King YouTube video.
Went to doctor's today to get a physical. Med Tech kept talking about basketball. Surprised I had any urine. Taco Bell afterwards!

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

David checks out the Satanic Bible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPzpuxvv9No
Went to the Dentist. No cavities! Never had one in my life! ^_^
Quiet night of work. Carolotta didn't Show & JessB was sick so I had to work with Boss Jessica & Nurse Debbie. They were both so tired! XD

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Had a fun conversation with family. Mom wants this mixer & I was teaching her how to use eBay. No one likes my Napoleon Dynamite costume...
Finally booked flights for San Fran trip! Then Tony came over and helped book the Hotel. Then saw Immortals. Time for some sleep...
Got a bunch of DVDs & Games at Walmart. Ate at Golden Corral. Stuffed myself so much that I threw up in the parking lot...
Months ago, they changed wordings in a bunch of prayers/responses at mass. Finally learned all of it! No more reading off papers for me!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Parents wanna set me up on a blind date. Kevin Pham (our realtor) sent a card asking if I could meet his niece. O_O
Went to Co Khanh's for her daughter's (Sarah) birthday. There was a princess who read stories. Food's good. I'm a human pinata to the kids.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Looks like I can sleep peacefully now. The group has decided on a hotel for the San Francisco trip. And I just bought a new HD Camcorder!

Thursday, March 8, 2012

LOL "Is that Parc55's love seat in pics!? No one's gonna sleep on that! Gonna be forced to sleep in fetal position or have feet in the air!"
Ate at Red Lobster with family. It was very dark in there. ;) Mom was very dramatic and playful LOL.
Worked hard on an Email that has all the info we need for San Francisco. Hopefully my bros decide on everything by the end of the week...
Vicki had this long piece of lint stuck in her belly button. Finally got that eye sore out. Geez, what a long work night...
Had the Taco Bell 12 Taco pack. SF trip is going through delays because we can't decide on a hotel. >_<

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

I think we've decided on a hotel in SF, it's usually most difficult part of trip-planning for us. Likely booking the trip this weekend...

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

I don't want to go to Walmart for awhile. My left ear is getting back to normal. Sound was really muffled the past week or so...

Monday, March 5, 2012

My Life up to Today

Most of my updates will mainly be from my Twitter. Actually, I text to a site call ping.fm, and from there it takes that one post and exports it to all my profiles across the internet...

So since I'll start posting more on these blogs, I might as well give you a history of my life. My name is David Anh Khoa Nguyen. Anh Khoa being my Vietnamese name. I like potato products, especially video games!

To my knowledge, my dad (Jimmy) was the youngest son (second last) in a family of 11-13 kids (the number keeps fluctuating). My mom (Mai) was the second oldest in a family of 7 kids. Her and my Uncle Phillip, Aunt Mary, and Uncle Vincent escaped from the Vietnam War in a boat. They were picked up and were in refugee camps in Malaysia and the Phillipines. It was at these refugee camps when my mom and dad started to get to know each other. When the time came for them to come to the United States, my mom went to Wichita, Kansas and my dad stayed with his family in Portland, Oregon. My parents continued to exchange letters and then my dad decided to move to Wichita and marry mom. Relatives were celebrating across the globe. My grandparents (who were both still in Vietnam at the time), met up and had parties and dinners in Vietnam.

My parents always bring up their first date in US. They apparently ate at McDonald's. Since both of them did not know English, they went with whatever they could understand. They both understood the word "happy" so they ordered a Happy Meal. It wasn't until they got the box and opened up a coloring book that they realized it was a meal for kids. So anyway, they got married in June 1985.

According to my calculations, I was likely conceived at the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix in Carthage, Missouri. That's what my parents claimed was their honeymoon. Each year, Vietnamese Catholics (mainly) do a pilgramage to Carthage to celebrate this festival honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary. I pretty much go every year except years when we're too busy or exhausted. Anyway, nine months from that festival, I was born (May 6, 1986).

As far as I know, I had a pretty peaceful childhood. My parents lived in a tiny apartment. They had pictures and VHS tapes of my baby years. I remember watching myself choke on a piece of styrofoam on Christmas, gliding down a slide on my birthday and playing with my sister, Christine, who was born on July 9, 1988. About a year after she was born, we moved to Barron Street where I spent a majority of my childhood.

I went to Beech Elementary, which was just a block away. I had some very nice neighbors. To the left of our house (looking out the driveway), are the Landers. They had two kids too, Lindsey and Cory. To the right was an old man and woman, who I never knew their names. But they let us go into their backyard and pick pears off the tree. When the old man died from falling off a ladder, they moved and the people who moved in after cut down the poor tree... To the front of us, a couple families have lived there. The most memorable were probably the Changs, a chinese family but they knew how to speak Vietnamese. Raymond Chang was the older, and Jessica was the younger. We used to play and go see movies. Raymond's cousin Andrew lived right down the street. Raymond's family eventually moved and a grandpa moved in with his chubby granddaughter Catherine, who wouldn't leave my sister alone. The the left of the Chang house lived a brown dog. And to the left was Rick, who would always come over to visit whenever my dad's working out in the lawyn.

My dad owned a bunch of apartment buildings that he rented and that was a huge chunk of our income. I used to spend exhausting days and even nights helping him fix up those apartments. I remembered one year, someone left the oven on and it burned down one of the apartments completely. It took us months to get it back to good condition to rent it out again. On the side, my dad was a photographer. He used to take pictures during weddings and all that. When the photo world went digital, he kinda took a break from it and made it more of a hobby than a job. He used to be the manager of a photo studio call Color Craft, on occassion, we would have to stay there and be bored in the lunch room at his work. Through the years, we met a bunch of his coworkers. Annette was one that was always visiting, she eventually turned Catholic with my dad as her sponsor. Big Doug and Cory (who I remember would never wear short-sleeve shirts) would come to fix up our computers. And then there's Steve Winn, my dad's boss, who had a daughter of his own that would play with my sister. Most of my memories of my dad's photo job would involve this amusement Park call Joyland, which is now closed. We used to go there almost every year and go on the roller coasters and egg hunts during Easter. Ah, the memories...

My mom worked in a post office call Postal Presort for awhile before moving to Intrust Bank. I'm not sure what exactly she does at Intrust but it looks like she won't be going anywhere anytime soon. My grandparents, after they came to the US, worked with her at the post office. I remember when my grandparents first came to Wichita, my mom ran up to them as they were coming out of the terminal.

Oh, by the way, the remaining relatives came over to Wichita too: My oldest aunt (Hoa), who took forever to come here due to paperwork, came in 2005. Both my aunt Kristen and uncle Francis arrived in Wichita not long after my sister was born. With that, pretty much the whole Hoang family (my mom's side of the family) was in Wichita, Kansas by the time I finished college.

Talking about my cousins may take forever but I'll do it. Rather than giving you a full story. I'll just list them out by parents and with their Vietnamese names since that's usually what I refer them to.
Loi & Hoa - Teresa/Lan, Roy/Duc, Tri
Jimmy & Mai - David/Khoa, Christine/MaiAnh/Em
Phillip & Tina - Joanna/Thi, Anna/TamNhu, Andy/VietAnh, Joseph/MinhAnh
Travis & Mary - Aaron/Khang, Arnold/Minh, Allison/MaiVy
Vincent & Theresa - Clark
David & Kristen - Alex/Tam, Andrew/Vinh
Francis & Linh - Helen, Ethan, Brandon

I was never close to my dad's side of the family but I have a ton of cousins on that side too. Back in 2000, we had a family reunion and that's when I met most of them. Since then, I never met them again until my grandfather died in 2012. My dad was happy to see him before he died about a couple months before. My grandmother already left this world when I was a baby. The only thing I can really say is that I have some great aunts and uncles on my dad's side of the family. Aunt Ha and I share our tastes in food, Uncle Son was like my dad's twin, Bac Hang was like the director and Co Hien from California had some of the cutest kids in the world! A few years after that family reunion, my youngest aunt died. I didn't go the funeral, but it's a sad thought. My cousins were no older than 13 at the time.

Well, that's quite enough of my family. Let's talk about my friends!

I went to Beech Elementary. I remember we had to carpool this other kid name "Abi-shake" that's how it's pronounce according to my mom. Few years later, we had another boy name Francis take us to/from school, he was a fan of Power Rangers and Rugrats, both children's television shows. I had a crush on this girl name Rosita Sommers in 4th Grade and on Lauren Hull in 5th. I never saw them again after elementary school until the internet crossed our paths again. When I finally found them through this social service call Facebook, they already had families.

Probably my best friend in elementary and part of middle school was Chayane Arreola. I honestly, don't know what's up with him these days. But we used to cause chaos and get in trouble during class and on the bus. I remember in 6th Grade, I gave a girl the middle finger (and I had a crush on her too, Mandy German) and Frank O'Guin, Chayane and I all got in trouble for it.

I pretty much had new friends each year of school as we went on. Paul Pechin and John Breiner pretty much stuck around up to present day. I had quite a luxury of friends. I graduated high school giving a very moving speech and that's when people started to notice me.

From middle school up to the end of college, I was in the church choir. Cherl Gnad was the director, her husband Pat and I were like best friends. And Debbie Lehecka was the piano player and she was absolutely amazing, very talented instrumentalist! Sam Le and my dad played the guitar for the choir. Everyone else in the choir fluctuated in and out. I remember we used to practice at these women's house, Marion and Maria. Joey was a great singer and seller of instruments. There was also the energetic Charlie. And then there's Kara Carter. We kinda dated but it didn't work out. She used to ask me to buy her cigarettes and alcohol and I accept the task.

I was in the Premedical club at Wichita State University, where I got a chemistry degree (minor in math and sociology). I met most of my friends there and the Asian Student Conference. I entered the Asian Club when a friend (Diana Le) invited me to sing in this concert, she didn't do very well but people were impressed with my singing talents. She used to be in the choir at church too. I stuck around in the Asian Club although I wasn't very involved. The Premed Club ended up being a waste of my time although I did met this great girl name Stephanie Keomany. I never got over the fact that she cheated me out of $100 but looking back, it wasn't worth losing a friendship over. I don't think we ever got past the awkwardness of seeing each other from henceforth.

Some of my most influential teachers were Ms. Orlando in Kindergarten (who was there when I lost my first tooth), Miss Phillis in 1st grade, who I had my first school birthday party in. In 2nd Grade, I had Mr Nissan, who I lied to a lot, claiming I worked at Joyland (because at the time my Uncle Francis worked there), 3rd Grade was Miss Dawson, she had a daughter my age but was in a different class. I never liked Miss Bloom in 4th Grade but Ms McKain in 5th Grade was awesome, she would give me math tutoring. In 6th Grade, I had Ms Rachel KeeAdams and Miss Kay, they loved my dad and it was in 6th grade when I had my first 4.0 GPA! From then forth, I was never connected much to any of my teachers. My math and science teacher Mr. Baxter was very nice and he gave me some great advice for the longest time. My dad says he runs into Mr. Dennis Baxter a lot, he owns apartments for rent too!

In college, I guess Dr. Melvin Zandler had a big influence on me 'cause I did research for him. Dr. Mike VanStipdonk was cool but I don't think he really liked me much, same with Dr. Erach Talaty. Ron Matson's positive thinking and feminist influence was a big reason why I have a minor in sociology.

I had a bunch of female friends that I wish developed into a relationship but it was obviously not meant to be. And some I dated but we remained as friends. Nhung Tran is probably the girl I enjoy being with the most because we have similar personalities. But she is very keen with sticking with her boyfriend, Miguel. I went volunteering with this one girl name Sasha and got to meet her parents and family/friends at her graduation party but it was never gonna develop into anything beyond friends. I did go out with this other girl name Thanh Do, it never really worked out there either 'cause I can never understand what she's saying...

For two years, I worked as a Medications Aide and Nurse Assistant at Clare Bridge of Wichita Brookedale Senior Living. I love it there. I went out with a girl name Karene there but we don't see each other much anymore. I felt taken advantage of when we hung out 'cause she would have me buy her stuff. I also hung out with another coworker name Danielle, she was a bit tall for me but she was such an airhead that I love her company. Such a fun girl to be around with! Before Danielle came into the scene, I was seeing a girl name Eunice. She was probably the one that stood out the most 'cause she was African-American. My family was tolerable of our interracial relationship. As a matter of fact, the first time I french kissed a girl was with Eunice!

There was a time in the middle of 2010 when working at the Bridge was just perfect! All of my coworkers got along to a certain degree. I am now the last remaining of that perfect group. I wish I can go back and experience those fun work days again, when it was me with Trina Washington, Matt Crawford, Jamal and Musa. Now I just talk with Tom all night and listen to all the awkwardness of the female employees gossiping about each other.

Now to the best part! My BEST FRIENDS! My brothers! Joshua Akins, Paul Pechin, and Tony Khuu. We've known each other for a long time but it wasn't until 2006 when we started the group, DJPT. Our first hangout was in the mall. Starting with the Sears entrance. From then, we had many adventures and travels. We went to Florida twice, Los Angeles and a couple road trips to the University of Kansas and El Dorado, Kansas. In 2011, Josh decided to disband from the group to pursue some religious life. We never understood why and his other friends Trent Hamm and John Dye were worried that he has been abducted by a cult! Pretty much Josh dropped off the face of the earth... An unofficial member of the group was John Breiner, but he was more my friend than anyone else's.

The happiest time of my life was probably around the time when my cousin Lan was getting married in 2011. The family was complete and all together, first time since ever! I went to New Jersey and New York a year before to witness my Godson/Cousin, Joseph, have his baptism. Being a Godfather made slightly more religious than before but not to the point where I would abandon my friends like Josh. Joseph is a huge part of my life. I send him gifts each Christmas. I hope he will grow up to actually know who I am and that I love him dearly like an actual son.

So what are my hobbies? Starting in 2005, I started collecting. It's a minor hobby earlier in my life but it wasn't until 2005 when it became an actual full-time job. I was collecting VHS and random action figures before then. Now, I collect everything from movies, video games, action figures, books, hats, comic books, ect... I became a huge fan of Alice in Wonderland to the point that I worked at the Disney Store for about two years just to get Alice stuff. Most of my money I earned from work goes to collecting and buying the things I collect.

Well, I guess that's enough from me. You pretty much have a good enough background on my life now. So go ahead and read the rest of my updates, journals and tweets. I hope my life story is of interest to you. Thank you for reading. :)

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Nice out Sunday but I didnt go out. Slept all day. Red Skin potatoes are great at IHOP but dont buy the frozen kind at the store. Yuck!

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Went to Watermark Books for the first time. Probably the last time too... The people in the cafe were so loud & obnoxious!
Laura had Audrey by the hair and wouldnt let go. "I caught the burglar!"

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Went on a search for the Satanic Bible. Book-a-Holics and Barnes and Noble didn't have it. Got McDonald's for temporary happiness.
Mom: "Achooo!! [breathing heavily], Em: "Mother, you are so dramatic". Em just showed us how to have Tidus lay down.
Ate Yakisoma & Boba Tea at Tsunami's with bros. Ran into Allen. Had craving for white chocolate so bought some at Walmart. Time for a nap!
Dream: At old house. Em & I inside watching out window. A slasher in driveway. Neighbors group up to get him. Then clean up mess. Scary! :(